Inventor of public lavatory honoured in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

George Jennings, the inventor of the first public lavatory, has been honoured alongside the man who created the modern dustbin in a series of new entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

As the edition focuses for the first time on people who have improved the domestic habits of Britain, such as gardeners, landscape architects and domestic engineers.

George Jennings gains a place for having invented the first public lavatories for the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851. He charged one penny for the innovative concept, which led to the expression "spending a penny".

Potter Thomas Twyford (1849 -1921) who produced the first one-piece china toilet, and John Shanks (1825-1895), one of the first people who mass-produced lavatories and fitted out the Titanic bathrooms, join fellow Victorian Sir Thomas Crapper, who improved the flush toilet, in the dictionary.

The Telegraph